I thought this was a joke of match-up but apparently this fight was supposed to happen at the WW limit. I can't believe this was seriously considered; how close was this fight from happening?
King didnt want it in the end from what I can recall...which meant he wasnt making enough money out of it more then likely.
If I remember correctly, they were actually being showcased together on the same card so as to stir interest in the fight, but that turned out to be the night Norris was upset by Brown, which sent any plans for that fight down the shitter. If Chavez was seriously going to be put in with Norris, then he was basically being cashed out IMO (which is possible, seeing as he had lost some of his mystique after the Whitaker fight and appeared to be on the decline then).
I don't think it was ever close to being a reality. What did Chavez have to gain from fighting Norris, except two black eyes? Norris was a wannabe star, who never quite became one. His win over Leonard gave him a lot of momentum, but he failed to capitalise on that. He was a bigger man than Julio by some margin; a natural jnr. middleweight. Chavez himself said in a Ring magazine article (this was before he fought Whitaker) that the Norris fight wasn't going to ever happen, as he would be giving away too much size. The inability to land a fight with Chavez frustrated Norris a hell of a lot. The guys in his own division simply didn't have drawing power and that's why he looked at the lower weight classes. He could have looked at middleweight too, but the two biggest names in the game (Chavez and Whitaker) looked less risky (imo) and were bigger fights.
